


Five Children and It

by ANonsense



Category: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - All Media Types, Naruto
Genre: Baki hates the world, Chocolate Factories, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Dangerous factories, Everybody is saved, Frau Gloop is very concerned with safety, Gaara does not appreciate nut puns, Gaara does not do rapping, Gaara has English difficulties, Gaara is on a people diet, Gen, Humor, Oompa Loompas aren't what they seem, Post-Chuunin Exams, Pre-Shippuden, Shukaku is a menace, Shukaku likes violence, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Willy Wonka is not concerned with safety, bad language, parenting is difficult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 19:05:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12260298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ANonsense/pseuds/ANonsense
Summary: Gaara kept glaring until the man straightened up and turned to the adults, wincing out a sickened grin as he did so and dusting off the velvet of his coat."He hates you," said Shukaku, grinning. "How long did that take? Five minutes?"...(In which Gaara and Baki infiltrate the tour of a secretive chocolatier and save many children from accidents.)





	1. Fudging It

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sorry there’s no differentiation between when they speak English and when they speak Japanese, but it should either be obvious or shouldn’t matter. If it does make it difficult to read, I’ll see what I can do. (Oh, and also, the fact Gaara initially doesn’t understand a word of what people are saying and then starts to gradually catch more and more of it until he’s following the conversation is partially my oversight, but also (and I am going with this) because you sort of need to warm up and get into a still-being-learnt foreign language when you’re listening to people speak before you can understand what they’re saying, in my experience.) And… please forgive me on Shukaku’s language… it’s Shukaku. And (yes, yes, this A/N is long) Gaara assumes Violet is English because she is speaking English, as he hasn’t been paying much attention to the other candidates. I do know she is in fact American.

Gaara blinked. The man in front of him was not as tall as he seemed to want to be, not as good with people as he needed to be and definitely irritating. It was a pity the Chuunin Exams had been a couple of weeks ago, or this man would not have been a man anymore. Indeed, this man would not have been a _human being_ anymore. Perhaps not even _recognisable_ as a human being anymore, unless you happened to be a medical student or perhaps a taxidermist.

If Gaara had been anyone else (indeed, behind him, Baki seemed to be reconsidering his offer of parenthood), he would have been sincerely considering walking back out through the gates. Then acquiring a blowtorch and a canister of petrol. As it was, Gaara simply blinked.

All around him, children sneered and glared and gaped. Gaara turned. Blinked. But that was all he did.

The man - in the _top-hat_ , the _goggles_ and the _gloves_ \- looked down at them. Awkwardly.

(Baki, behind Gaara, subtly readied his kunai. It would not work to bring down the boy should he attack, but it would distract. For a moment. Probably. Hopefully. Most likely not. In any case, they couldn't _kill_ the chocolatier on live TV. It wouldn't be diplomatic.)

Up on the makeshift stage... in fact, it _was_ a stage, since it had just been performed upon... the man in the ridiculous top-hat smiled stiffly, and said,

"G-"

Something. In English. The English dictionary in Gaara's pocket laughed tauntingly and jabbed its hard edges into his thigh as if to say 'Ha! What a silly little boy! Doesn't even know our language!' From inside his head, there came a sarcastic clapping noise.

 **Well, well...** slurred the Ichibi, smugly. **I _told_ you.**

 _Go away_ thought Gaara. _You are irritating._

To either side of him, the children and their parents seemed to be at a loss for what to do. Apparently they'd already labelled the man an incurable-

**Nutcase. Mental fuckup. Whack-job two twigs short of a basket case. Congratulations, Spazimodo! You seem to have found a frien-**

_Shut up._

**You should have studied harder last night. Maybe you could've talked to him about your similarities.**

_...Shut. Up._

**Like the colour red, for example...**

_..._

**Or your terminal fear of rejection.**

"Shut _up_..."

There was a pause in the speech. No, the speech had finished. There was a pause in the man's talking. He had been talking for too long - it was a rather a relief - but the eyes burning holes in Gaara's line of sight made it less so.

"If there could be no mumbling on the tour because I can't stand it when people mumble," said the man, eyeing him up and down, but generally looking nervous. It was not something Gaara was unused to.

Behind him, Baki shifted. He wanted him to say something.

"I apologise," he said, flatly. It was the one phrase Baki had drummed and drummed into him before they left, and his accent (although mostly atrocious for other set phrases) was barely noticeable except in a practised sort of way. "I cannot speak yet of good English."

The man on the stage smiled a tight sort of smile and waited.

Gaara waited back.

There was an unannounced staring contest for a few seconds. Then Baki, behind him, spoke. Baki was better at English. It was the most widely-spoken second-language in the world, and it had been a requirement for passing the jounin exam.

"Please forgive my son for interrupting," he said, bowing. "He was merely expressing the pain of his headache and it will not happen again."

Willy Wonka's eye and mouth twitched in unison. It appeared he wasn't sure of what to make of his tourists quite yet.

"Ok then, on with the tour..." he said, and swished between melted doll corpses up through the factory entrance, his contest winners following him like uncertain ducks.

 **Bet you didn't expect this,** said Shukaku from the insides of his mind.

Still irritated, Gaara ignored him and slipped through into the darkness ahead.

...

The corridor was unexpected. For one thing, instead of being cool, air-conditioned beige (like all of the buildings in _Suna_ ) and having a slight corporate feel (like a factory _should_ ), it was almost tropical - not humid, but not _arid_ either, and very far from damp - and childishly decorated in red and silvery-blue, which did not match in the slightest. It was, in fact, very odd.

" _What_ did Mr. Wonka just say?" asked Baki, coming to walk beside him, and lowering his voice to almost a whisper. It wasn't expectant so much as accusatory.

**You're fucked.**

_I know._

"He said to unwrap."

"No, he said to _take off_. Close enough. Take off what, however."

"..."

"Gaara."

"..."

"The word is 'coats'."

**Gaara, the word is 'coats'.**

_I know the word is coats._

**No you don't. What's the word?**

_...Cots._

_...Cats._

_…Coats._

_...Goats._

_...Coats. It's coats. It's coats._

"Gaara."

"Why are you talking about coats?" came a voice from next to them. A voice wearing a child's fur jacket and a look of disgust. From in front of them came a long, irritated sigh and an abrupt halt.

"Is there anything you wish to discuss with the class?" snapped Mr. Wonka. The eyes of the child beside them flickered impatiently over to the noise, and then back to Gaara. Gaara's eyes narrowed further. More _English_.

"I talk coats with my father," he said. "I get better my English like this."

There was an icy pause, almost as if an entire party of people had collectively decided their toleration of his presence was going to stop.

 **It's not just me,** said Shukaku.

 _Shut up_ thought Gaara.

In front of the group, the purple-suited man took stock of Gaara with narrowed eyes. Then he smirked.

"You must be Gaara Ternooki," he said, pointing a sharp glove, as if his knowing Gaara's fake name and pronouncing it badly would show him to be intelligent and smart beyond all further speculation. "You're the boy who knocked out the interviewer and threw his camera out of a window."

"No," said Gaara, after a slight pause. "That is my brother."

Mr. Wonka frowned, and then snorted dismissively and waved a hand.

"You look alike," he said, and turned.

A second later, a small, blue thing grabbed him round his waist in a sudden, painful-looking version of the Heimlich manoeuvre.

**It's called a hug, dimwit.**

_I will drag your liver out through your nose with chopsticks and eat it with teriyaki sauce._

"Mr. Wonka! I'm Violet Beauregarde!" it said, jumping backward and leaving Mr. Wonka with an expression even Gaara could sympathise with.

Perhaps _only_.

"Oh," said the man. "I don't care."

"Well," said the girl, "you should care-"

 _Why should he care?_ thought Gaara, irritably. _You are a shrew._

Shukaku laughed, slamming a hand mentally into his back.

 **Girls,** it laughed. **Scare 'em, rape 'em, kill 'em. All they're good for.**

_No._

**Scare 'em, kill 'em, rape 'em.**

_No._

**Rape 'em, scare 'em, kill 'em.**

_No._

**Rape 'em.**

_No._

**Kill 'em.**

_NO._

**Come _on_ brat. My balls are withering away here. They're so blue they're practically black.**

_Shut up. I do_ not _want to know about the state of your balls._

**Prude. Kill 'em, kill 'em, kill 'em. Do it the fucking civilian way. Split their head against a stone and turn their skin inside out.**

"-type of wart you get on the bottom of your foot," the man was saying, giving a forced giggle that set Gaara's teeth on edge.

 **Her name's Veruca,** said Shukaku. **She's from England.**

 _Why are they all from_ England _?_

"I'm Augustus Gloop," said the fat boy, from in front of them. And there Gaara's comprehension ended: the child had the thickest German accent he had ever come across.

_My mistake. Not all._

His eyes flickered up to Baki. Baki ignored him.

"You're Mike Teavee..." continued Willy Wonka, as if Mike Teavee was three and a half years old. "You're the little devil who-"

**'Devil'. Useful word.**

_..._

**It practically means demon. Oh, and did you just hear him say 'cracked'? What a coincidence. Pretty much your descriptio-**

_Ripping off your nipples with tweezers and créme-bruléeing your eyeballs._

"And you."

Gaara blinked. His eyes widened. For there, standing beside his grandparent with a frightened face and worn-out brown clothes, was a boy he hadn't even noticed. He hadn't even been mentioned on the television.

"Well you're just lucky to be-" the chocolatier's face suddenly turned grey, and he paused. "Six?" he asked, quietly. Nervously. "Six?"

Around him, parents started murmuring. Noticing for the first time that there were in fact too many children, and that one person had to have entered without a ticket, or at least with a very clever forgery.

One person. And there was one boy that hadn't even been shown on the news.

As one, they turned.

The brown-clothed child's jaw stiffened. The grandparent blinked helplessly.

"He has got a ticket," said the man. "He has. Here it is; I'll show it to you!"

And he pulled a quavering ticket out from his side pocket to give to Willy Wonka.

Mr. Wonka frowned.

After a pause, he shook his head. "It's a ticket," he said. "It is. I made them so that no-one could forge them, even if they'd wanted to. There's a secret ingredient."

Behind Gaara, Baki tensed.

...

_"We've been keeping surveillance on 24/7. It's suspicious. No imports, no exports, and yet everything's there exactly as planned. Fresh too. For all we've seen the most likely solution is slave labour. He'd never be able to produce that much on his own, even with machines."_

_"So, you're wanting a ninja."_

_"Two ninja: the competition is for a parent and a child. Oh, and a replica Golden Ticket, if possible."_

_"Done. That'll be B-rank pay, then, sir."_

...

_"How are we going to get hold of a ticket for long enough to duplicate it, though?"_

_"Money. Gold. B-rank pay's way more than enough, and, anyway, if it's more, we can just put it on the client's bill."_

_"..."_

_"Someone will go for it."_

...

_"I WANT MY GOLDEN TICKET!"_

_"I know, darling. I know. It's coming back tomorrow. I haven't lost it, I promise."_

_"BUT I WANT IT!"_

...

_"We need someone clever, someone deadly, someone expendable, and we need a child."_

_"Bugger."_

...

Eventually, finally, they had gotten a sixth golden ticket. It had been dangerous, expensive, time-consuming...

...but they hadn't heard anything about a secret ingredient.

...

Willy Wonka waited, glove held out, expressionless. His eyes darted. One by one, the people in the room produced their tickets. One by one, Willy Wonka pronounced them valid.

Then he came to Gaara.

Gaara held out the ticket.

_Please hold. Please, please hold._

**Wouldn't it be hilarious if he noticed straight away? Wouldn't it be amusing? We could crush all their little brains out and plaster them over the walls. We could sever their tendons and break their limbs. We could-**

_Please hold. Please, please hold._

Willy Wonka picked the ticket out from between Gaara's fingers and gave it a narrow-eyed inspection.

"Where were you when you bought this ticket?" he asked.

"Japan," said Gaara. It was close enough: they could speak Japanese.

"And what shop did you buy it in?"

"The shop I is near on the time. I think it _O-kashi ya_ * or close."

**If he knows Japanese, you are _fucked._**

_Shut up. He doesn't._

**Pray.**

_He doesn't._

"And where's that?" asked Mr. Wonka, leaning in. He was smiling in a not very nice way.

"Tottori**," said Gaara. Hopefully he wouldn't know it.

"Oh," said Mr. Wonka, frowning. "Well... I... Hmm." He turned the ticket over in his hand, and took what looked like a small magnifying glass out of his pocket.

The party watched as he drew his eye along the ticket, stopping at everything that could have been included or missed. Gaara was still. Mr. Wonka drew the magnifying glass much more slowly up the ticket again. His face was slowly turning grey. His pulse - Gaara could hear it, or rather, Shukaku could - was steadily quickening. The ticket was starting to curl up in his hands.

"It's not... It's not..." he stuttered. "I must have made too many. Darn and bust it! I must have made too many, and I can't even recall it."

Gaara, internally, breathed a sigh of relief. Externally, he merely glared. He pulled the ticket out of Mr. Wonka's unresisting grasp, and slid it possessively back into his pocket.

...

_"Hey, Kichi-san."_

_"What?" Kichi got up from his chair, set his coffee mug down, and strode over to his colleague, who was taking his turn examining the ticket, ready for replication. He'd dissected it into eight separate layers, so far, and was currently working on analysing the third; a thicker layer, made of cream-coloured, slightly waxy cotton._

_"Come and see this,"_

_"Yes?" Kichi took his turn looking down the microscope. "So?"_

_"Heh," His colleague chuckled. "It's got white chocolate in the cotton," he said, grinning. "Ingenious: seems to stick the whole thing together, along with some sort of glue. I didn't know what the smell was at first."_

_"Weird," said Kichi, huffing, and then returning to his chair and his coffee on the other side of the room._

...

Gaara kept glaring until the man straightened up and turned to the adults, wincing out a sickened grin as he did so and dusting off the velvet of his coat.

"Ok, let's get moving, people," he said, then laughed falsely, and started striding purposefully along the corridor in a way that gave people the choice of looking undignified and running to catch up, or looking relaxed, and falling significantly behind. Luckily, the corridor was just one straight line, and it wasn't like Mr. Wonka could lose them anywhere, no matter how much he looked like he wanted to.

 **He hates you,** said Shukaku, grinning. **How long did that take? Five minutes?**

 _Shut up,_ said Gaara, coldly, as they processed (leisurely) behind Wonka. The corridor was a long, almost timeless one, and looked from where they were standing as if it stretched for miles, possibly under the surface of the earth: the floor was at an almost-unnoticeable downward tilt, and the factory hadn't looked this big from outside... but, as they walked further, it felt almost as if the walls were closing in on them: the ceiling sloped at a sharper angle than the floor did; the walls narrowed, their decorative grooves getting ever more closely spaced to create the illusion of going on for ages, and the carpet they were standing on seemed to go from rectangular to almost triangular, within the space of about a minute. Claustrophobia started to itch at his senses, and he watched as Baki's movements became much more stiff and jerky than they had been before.

He was almost glad when they stopped… at a brightly coloured door about the size of a grape.

Mr. Wonka bent down in the little concave made by the end of the walls: he seemed to have gained back some of his composure. He said something about the door... or, he must have done, given that he had his keys out, and was talking to them. Gaara didn't really care. To be honest, this mission was starting to bore him already. Pre-Chuunin exams, he would have rolled his eyes at this point, and slaughtered the lot of them, but he was trying to be good.

**Fuck you. Give up. Dieting's bad for you.**

_It's not a diet. Diets don't last._

**Like I said; a diet.**

He ignored him. It was almost a habit, at this point, to cut off his attention mid-sentence and snap out of whatever mental state he had been in to notice what was going on around him. Shukaku hated it.

 Wonka was saying something that sounded like it was supposed to interest them. It was something about chocolate. No surprise there then. Shukaku rolled over in the back of his mind and started wriggling out of his chains. Gaara tightened them mentally and he felt Shukaku's glare, hard and irritated, on the back of his eyes.

A glove pressed against the wall around the door, Wonka's face awash with childish glee and, at the same time, shadowed in dark mystery.

 **Show off,** said Shukaku. **He's gone and made a chakra blanket to impress all the kiddies.**

_What?!_

**He's a civilian, kid, but he's been places. Don't let that naive child mask fool you for one bit. Fucking bas- Oh, wait. No, he's just a civilian. My mistake.**

Now Gaara knew it was there, he could feel the chakra. It hummed about the place in quiet pockets, promoting growth and calming people. Too much exposure, and a person could go insane. Not that that worried Gaara. He already was, truth be told-

**Cracked as a fucking plate. Nutty as a tanuki's balls. Twenty-eight kunai and a pack of senbon short of a picnic lunch. You're insane, brat. Wrapped up crooked. A fuzz of wrong ends and sparking wires that shouldn't be sparking. Honestly, kid; you're a mess. And that's coming from _me_.**

_Shut up._

**It's true.**

_I'm getting better. It's getting better._

**Mad.**

_I'm ignoring you._

**Yeah, and a fucking good job of that _you're_ doing. I-**

Gaara cut him off without so much as a warning. The chakra he'd felt earlier was natural; not the result of anything living, which was good. If it _had_ been, it would have been a mess to clear up. He'd have had to flatten the building it lived in and kill it, in that case. Here, it was just congregated nature chakra... which was weird, but not punishable by death.

Wonka, however... now that was more difficult.

"He can use chakra," he whispered in Japanese to Baki. "Shukaku can feel it."

He felt a firm hand on his shoulder. It was too tense to be anything but an act for the other parents, but it reassured him none the less.

"I know," replied Baki, barely moving his lips. "It's too wonky to be anything taught, though. It's a classic case of civilian accident. Chances are, he doesn't even realise he's doing it."

Gaara mentally breathed a sigh of relief. Outwardly, he nodded.

Wonka's eyes had narrowed again, but it looked as if he had decided to ignore them.

"Why is the _door_ so small?" came the scathing voice of the girl in the boiler suit. Or, at least, that's what it looked like to Gaara. It was probably latest civilian fashion or something, but he didn't keep track.

Wonka grinned. "That's to keep all the great, big chocolaty flavour inside. Haha..."

And with that, he started to push the door open.

Gaara glared. "No," he said.

Wonka stopped. "Excuse me?" he said. He didn't sound like he could quite believe it.

From behind him, Baki shut his eyes and breathed a deep, calming breath through his nose.

Gaara continued. "Flavour is not like this. You cannot catch it with door. This is ridiculous."

**Say ' _fucking ridiculous_ '. It'll make it sound more convincing. Trust me.**

Gaara didn't trust him. Gaara didn't trust Shukaku one little bit. However, there still remained the fact that Shukaku actually knew good English, whereas he didn't. It wouldn't hurt, in any case.

"This is very fucking ridiculous," he said, flatly, and then watched their responses.

The suited man - the one they'd hired the ticket from initially - went almost puce: the sort of embarrassed, startled red that shows the occupant wants to strangle the interloper as quickly as they can get their hands around a neck before they say anything else. Wonka stiffened with all the finesse of a corpse. One of the women hissed through her teeth and looked wide-eyed and shocked towards her identical daughter, who was gazing blandly at him with cynical eyes.

The German mother had breathed in and hadn't breathed out. Her son was still eating. The thin-haired man was clenching his teeth. The grandfather in the ratty suit had clapped his hands over his relative's ears, but hadn't otherwise reacted.

Baki had breathed out, calmly.

"I apologise for my son's behaviour," he rattled off. "He is new to English and he cannot yet get a hang of the language. If you will exc-"

"No swearing on the tour," said Wonka, sourly. "If I hear one more word that even _remotely_ sounds like it could be a swearword-"

"I apologise," said Gaara. He was getting tired of this. He could only see a few stalks of grass between the edge of the door and its frame, but it was enough to intrigue him. Had it been but a few months earlier, he would have squashed the factory owner and gone on ahead, but he couldn't, because it was a _covert mission_.

**Do it.**

_No._

Wonka scowled, but started pushing open the door again. "Now, my dear children," he started, sounding very practised; enough that each child could hear the individually-aimed undertones of irritated cold beneath every word. It was obvious he felt they'd _already_ overstayed their welcome, and it was barely ten minutes into the tour. "Do be careful. Don't lose your heads. Don't-"

 **No chance of that,** said Shukaku, in a wide grin that split his head into what felt like fifty pieces. **You lost yours years ago.**

 _Shut up,_ said Gaara. It was automatic and familiar and fit into his mouth with little to no effort on his part.

"For the last time!" came the exasperated voice of Mr. Wonka. "No mumbling on the tour! I can't stand it when people mumble! Headache or no headache, you can talk clearly with e-nun-ci-a-ted sy-lla-bles, or _not at all_. Thank you!"

Oh. He'd said it aloud, then. Well, never mind. They already thought he was mad and annoying (which he was); two more words wouldn't tilt the balance.

He grunted in answer. Wonka, as ever, ignored him. His skill at that seemed to be increasing with every minute passed.

**Wonder how come that is...**

But Gaara ignored him. Finally, Wonka finished pushing open the door.

The one word Gaara could have used to describe it would have been ‘fake’. A vast array of plants and greenery, dotted about with strange fruit trees, a very brown river and odd, whimsical little things lay about in bunches – all utterly artificial. This might have been irritating, had it not been for the fact that all of it was edible, and therefore extremely impressive.

A few steps in, and the other children were gasping and gazing around, mouths open. Gaara was, though curious, keeping his excitement in check. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen plants before, in any case, and he had _certainly_ seen sugar sculpted to look like plants (In Suna anything plant-shaped was a bit of a novelty and was capitalised on to its full extent.); it just hadn’t been quite so large-scale. Besides, he didn’t want to give Wonka the satisfaction. Beside him, Baki was gazing appreciatively around at the foliage. Baki wouldn’t take anything, Gaara knew: Baki didn’t like the thought of anything that wasn’t nutritional or of use going into his body.

**His spouse is going to be disappointed.**

_Shut up._

The party descended gradually down a small incline, Wonka at the head of it. Gaara had already had his fill of the scenery and was now bored. Out of the corner of his eye, he was now following the movements of a few small, synthetically-attired red dots in the far distance using a triangular-shaped suction device. Baki was still playing the part of the overawed parent, but, having noticed the red dots before Gaara, had moved his attention to other important things, and was now scanning for threats.

**There aren’t any fucking threats. Threats are meant to be difficult opponents. The only difficult opponents are the fucking mission parameters. Let’s just ditch them, massacre and go.**

_Shut up._

**Massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre…**

_Shut up..._

**Tired of me already? Shame. We could’ve had so much fun together, you and me. D’you know the smell of blood and sugar?**

_Shut up._

**Believe me, one of the best smells in the world. Raw flesh against caramel. Mmm…**

Gaara cut him off. Wonka had just said something… odd. Not that that was particularly unusual.

“You say of ‘Cannabism’?” he blinked. “I think it is to eat person? Why eat person here?”

Wonka stopped abruptly, irritated. “It was theoretical,” he snapped. “ _If_ you’d let me finished, you would’ve been _able_ to _find_ that _out_ … And it’s ‘canniba _lism_.’”

Around him, the children were smirking and the parents were an equal mixture of amused and very much unamused. Some looked worried. Only the thinnest and his grandfather were managing to look patient with it.

“Come on,” said Teavee. “Are we _going_? Or is this just gonna be boring the rest of the way?”

Wonka turned irritably to him. “Little boys are meant to be seen and not heard. If you had _waited_ … in fact, if _all_ of you had waited-” he turned around to face the group with an expression that teetered on the edge of hard suggestion “-you might have gotten to try the room sooner. As it is,” and he paused for sarcastic breath, aimed directly at Teavee, “…enjoy.”

Teavee gave him a bored, ‘yeah, great’ look, and then turned, running off in the direction of a patch of red sugared pumpkins. The others scattered.

Gaara headed for the river. It, at least, looked quiet.

**I wonder how long it would take to drown in it?**

_Do you want to see?_

**That skinny one looks like he’d sink fast if you pushed him. Then he could rot in the river and make all the chocolate taste funny. Heh. I’d like to see _that_ , if you could arrange it.**

_Ha. Ha._

Gaara sat down on the sugar grass. On the surface of it, he just looked bored and lazy. In actuality, the sand he’d had stowed away in his civilian coat pockets since they’d started this nightmare was roaming about the place, top to bottom. He closed his eyes to get a better picture and let the particles drift.

A few minutes passed. He could hear the quiet, viscous gurgle of the chocolate river, and the muted roar of the waterfall, and the chattered murmurings further off between the other guests on the tour, and he could just about make out the heartbeats of all of them… although this was mainly Shukaku at work, again. It was a type of sensory meditation, in a way: absorbing the sounds in his surroundings and finding the synchronised lapping of his pulse against them. He focused on calming his breathing, and taking in all the scents in the air; from synthetic raspberry to hard, unhidden sugar; from burnt caramel to citrus and lime. He concentrated in turn upon each hair on his arms; each nerve ending; each inch of skin… and then he found it in his head: the control centre for the huge mass of sand, and he mentally tagged each individual grain and started following their lazy paths around the space, in this alien giant of a room.

…it took five and a half seconds to register the panic at the side of the chocolate river and another second and a half to rescue the boy; pulling him out of the chocolate using levitating platforms of underarm sand. From the watchers on the side, he felt a surge of confusion and terror as the German boy – frozen mid-scream – suddenly flew upwards into the air and shot backwards onto dry land without any apparent intervention. Gaara stood up and opened his eyes, calling back his sand in lazy, drifting particles that hopefully wouldn’t be noticed. To his disgust, the great majority of it was now brown and sticky.

The German boy’s mother was now clutching desperately at her son, wailing; Baki was tense but otherwise not reacting, and the other parents were all rather whey-faced. Willy Wonka himself was standing as straight as his back would let him, a nervous mouth pulled up into disapproving terror… and there were little red-suited men standing about looking at a loose end. One of them started signing very rapidly to one of their friends as if to ask what to do.

Gaara gave them a peripheral glance and then turned to watch Wonka.

“Was that _meant_ to happen?” came the voice of the father with the comb-over.

“No,” snapped Wonka.

“He was meant to _fall in_ then?” exclaimed the grey-suited father, pulling the wart-girl closer to him.

“No!” said Wonka. “He wasn’t meant to _do_ that in the _first_ place!”

“He is just a boy!” wailed the German mother.

“Quite,” said the grey-suited father. “Mr Wonka, are you _sure_ this factory passed inspection?”

Mr Wonka was looking increasingly frazzled.

“I don’t know why he flew backwards like that,” he said. “I didn’t build that.”

“Well you should’ve!” said the grey-suited father. “Are there _no_ other protective measures? You can’t rely on strokes of luck like that, you know.”

“I do not protect stupid children from themselves,” he responded, snippily. “Anyway, it’s _my_ factory-”

“There are no railings!” interrupted the German boy’s mother. “There was even no warning! Your irresponsibility put my son and all these children at risk!”

“This is a factory!” shouted Wonka, “Not a playground!”

“You said _enjoy_ ,” said Teavee, looking unimpressed.

“And ‘enjoy’ word is for play,” added Gaara. “I agree with these. Your playground room is not very healthy safe.”

“Any more ridiculous comments like that and I’ll kick you off the tour,” snapped Wonka.

“Mr Wonka, if you do not take this seriously,” said the grey-suited parent, “I shall file a law suit.”

“He isn’t even your son!” said Wonka. He sighed. “Yes, maybe the boy was put in danger from his _own stupid actions_ and perhaps there _may_ have been _railings_ and that may have _prevented_ the accident – I shall look into it – but the fact is, he _didn’t_ fall in, and therefore the safety of my factory should not be under discussion. I think we’re done here. Marcus-” he addressed one of the short little men. “-clean up the room again for when I come back. The rest of you…” He stopped, looking as if he was wondering whether or not the sentence was worth continuing, and then said wearily, “…on with the tour.”

In Gaara’s head, Shukaku was laughing hysterically. Since it was not at him for once, Gaara’s mouth was twitching slightly trying not to join in. Yes, killing held a certain satisfaction, but he understood now why the Uzumaki boy was so addicted to pranks. Slipping to the back of the group to walk with Baki, he took the opportunity to ask, “Who are the strange men in the red suits?”

“His workers,” replied Baki. “He calls them something like Unpa-Runpa, which may or may not be just the name he has given them, and he apparently made a deal with them in their native country to house them and pay them in cocoa beans.”

Gaara shot him a look.

“I know,” said Baki. “If it’s slave labour, we’ll look into it. Kidnapping we could do something about… but remember the client’s ‘hunch’ was only a hunch. He might not be doing anything wrong.”

**Doesn’t matter. We can kill him anyway. He’ll taste nice, I bet.**

_They do not have ‘cannilabism’ in this country._

**Shame.**

“Shukaku wants to eat him if he tries anything,” said Gaara.

Baki paled.

“Any more mumbling and I’ll make sure you have a nasty accident!” came the floated voice of Wonka over the heads of the others.

“Yes, we know you are good at that,” snapped the German boy’s mother, and prompted some more English bickering which Gaara didn’t listen to.

“He won’t eat _you_ ,” he said instead to Baki, who was still looking rather pale. “He says you’re too thin to bother with.”

“Thanks,” said Baki. He didn’t look grateful though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *O-kashi ya = I think it means sweet shop / candy store in Japanese. This is based on Google Translate, so, if I'm wrong, please PM me.  
> **Tottori = It's a real place in South-West Japan. I've actually never been there: I just picked a random place on Google Maps.


	2. Gobstopping

“All aboard!” said Wonka, cheerfully, as they boarded a fake pink boat made out of sugar. “Hey, did you guys know-” He then cut off abruptly as Gaara got in just behind Baki and sat on the bench next to the wart-girl and her father.

“Know what?” said the wart-girl, turning.

“Chocolate triggers endorphin release,” said Wonka, looking very irritable. “Gives one the feeling of being in love. Or it should, anyway. Maybe I should have some more of it. Maybe you all should have some more of it.”

“I don’t need more of it,” said the blonde-haired blue-eyed mother in the boiler suit. She eyed Wonka like a piece of meat and giggled.

Wonka sat down at the back of the boat with a tight grimace. “Onward!” he shouted. He didn’t otherwise respond.

The Unpa-Runpa – or whatever they were – started up a war drum at the front, and more of a hundred of the ones with oars started to pull them through the chocolate; slowly at first, and then with increasing speed until Gaara had to slump forward with his head between his knees just to keep from regurgitating his breakfast. Behind him, Wonka continued talking, sounding happier than when he’d first started, but Gaara didn’t bother to interpret the English. He lived in a desert. He didn’t do well on boats.

…

The “Stop the boat!” command from Willy Wonka a few minutes later was a welcome relief. When the boat slowed and finally stopped moving, pulled-up against a circular door, Gaara was the first out, trying not to stumble. Baki gave him a discrete arm to lean on, looking a bit more professional, and together they made it onto firm ground, the tour group following behind.

“This,” said Wonka, spreading out his arms to indicate the entire futuristic laboratory of a room they had just walked into, “is the most important room in the factory.”

 **Maybe he dissects people in here…** said Shukaku, hopefully.

 _Unlikely,_ thought Gaara.

**Not _unlikely_. Spoilsport. Dissections are fucking boss!**

_Don’t say that again._

**They are! All the gor~geous bodily or~gans on display~ and glistening in the artificial lights, and people do it with tweezers and scalpels and whizzing drills, and it’s my fa~vourite, Gaara-chan! Please, please say the next enemy nin-**

_No. No not even if you beg._

**We could even keep them alive, just like you’ve been saying. They’d make screams and we could sing along-**

_I don’t sing._

**Or we could beatbox.**

_No._

**Remember all those exercises I taught you? You do! You do! I can SEE them!** A maniacal cackle. **Butsun Katsun Butsun Katsun Butsun Katsun-**

Gaara tuned him out in disgust.

Wonka was staring at him. “I told you to scoot,” he said, when Gaara finally blinked.

“I do not understands this,” said Gaara.

“Skedaddle. Shoo.”

“…”

“Away… Go, go away, child… away… elsewhere… That’s it… go. Go! Shoo!”

Gaara went, feeling distinctly pissed.

**Bastard.**

_Yes._

He didn’t particularly feel like looking round the room – it was all sweets and he didn’t really have a sweet tooth – so he just hid on the other side of a large water tank with bright red balls in it and leant against the side.

“What’s your name?” came a mildly-interested voice from the left. It was the Teavee child Gaara had felt was less irritating than the others.

“Gaara,” he said, turning.

“Mike,” said the boy, holding out a hand.

Gaara looked at it until the boy put it away. He might have been less annoying than the others, but that didn’t make him not-annoying.

The boy grunted. Leant against the tank next to Gaara.

“I’m bored,” he said. “I’ve just got a new game called Mercenaries for PlayStation. I was playing that until Dad dragged me here.”

Gaara hadn’t understood most of that but it didn’t matter.

“Mm,” he said. He got the ‘bored’ bit, anyway.

They stood there in companionable silence for a bit, Mike having realised that Gaara didn’t like talking.

“Hey, Mr Wonka, what’s this?” came the voice of Violet over the top of the tank. She seemed to have found the bright red balls.

“Oh, let me show you,” began Mr Wonka, and Gaara half-heartedly listened as he excitedly detailed ‘Everlasting Gobstoppers’, which seemed to be just as the name suggested: large balls of coloured sugar without an end point. He could get one for Kankuro’s birthday to make him shut up.

**You could sew his mouth shut with it in.**

_No._

“… _nothing_ like gum,” Wonka was saying. “Gum is for chewing. And if you tried chewing one of these gobstoppers, you’d break all your little teeth off.”

“What is gum?” asked Gaara.

He felt Shukaku’s disappointment cloud over his mind in a dull aching mist and had to stop himself from squinting because of it.

“What is _gum_!?” shouted the girl in the boiler suit.

**You bring shame on this household.**

“Gum,” said Wonka, “is a tree resin called Chicle. It comes from the Chiclero tree and is almost like rubber, except that it is chewable and also utterly disgusting.”

“It comes in flavours,” said the girl in the boiler suit. She pulled a half-open packet out of her jacket pocket and took from it a small rectangular foil strip.

“Don’t eat it,” said Wonka. “Gum is horrible.”

“You sell it,” said the girl, flatly.

“Not by choice,” said Wonka.

“Here,” said the girl, holding a sticky white strip out to Gaara as if it were a five-pound-note she was giving to a homeless person.

Gaara took it. It was slightly sticky in his fingers and felt like malleable plastic.

“Don’t stick it on anything,” said Wonka. “It’s a tricky devil to remove and I hate the stuff. So do the Oompa-Loompas.”

“They’re probably just saying that because you employ them,” said the boiler-suit girl.

“No they’re not,” said Wonka, “they are very loyal.”

Gaara put the strip of gum in his mouth and let it sit there for a few moments. It was synthetic strawberry flavour.

“You chew it,” said the girl.

Gaara started to unenthusiastically chew. The girl grinned at him and turned back to Mr Wonka. “Do you have any gum _here_?” she asked. “You know, just so this visit isn’t actually a complete waste of time.”

“Violet!” gasped her mother.

Gaara kept chewing.

 **Gum isn’t normally strawberry flavoured,** said Shukaku, **Just so you know.** **Normal gum tastes a bit oily and leafy, like that weird drug you get in Hi no Kuni that makes you see stuff. It’s meant to be tree resin flavour, not fucking strawberry, just so you _know_.**

Gaara stopped chewing.

“You say it…ano… Ki no jushi?” he asked. The gum sat heavily on his tongue.

“Tree resin,” said Baki, helpfully, in English. “Ki no jushi is ‘tree resin’.”

Gaara swallowed.

“You’re not meant to swallow!” snapped the girl. “I just gave you that gum! I bought that!”

Gaara looked at her sideways until she shut up.

“I thought you said you wanted gum,” said Wonka from behind them. He looked irritated and was holding up a strip of gum in his left hand, a machine having extended into a long, metal dispenser in what had probably been an impressive display that they’d missed.

The girl in the boiler suit pushed to the front of the crowd.

“What flavour?” she asked.

Wonka, if possible, looked even more irritated. “Tomato soup, roast beef and blueberry pie,” he said. “With one strip of Wonka’s magic chewing gum- Hey!”

The girl had snatched the gum and was in the process of inserting it into her mouth.

“Magic, you say?” said the grandparent of the quiet boy.

“Yes, magic!” snapped Wonka. “It’s brilliant, in fact! Utter genius! A full three-course dinner all by itself, not that any of you are taking any notice- Don’t eat that, little girl, I still haven’t explained-”

The girl gave him a quelling glare that reminded Gaara of an angry Temari. “I’m the world record holder in chewing gum,” she said. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

“It’s not fear that kills people,” said Baki. “It’s lack of information.”

The girl paused. “What?”

“Thank you,” said Wonka, “as I was saying-”

In some sort of rebellious retaliation, the girl immediately shoved the chewing gum into her mouth at his words and started chewing furiously.

“Is it good?” asked her mother.

“Spit it out,” said Wonka.

“It’s amazing,” said the girl.

“Drugs often are,” said Baki.

The girl spat it out in shock. “Drugs!?” she shrieked. She turned to Wonka. In fact, everybody turned to Wonka.

“Isn’t that what you were going to say?” asked Baki, innocently. “Gum is often made of hallucinogenic resin, after all.”

“No!” cried Wonka. “Maybe where _you_ come from! I was just going to say that it turns people into _blueberries-_ ”

“That’s even worse!” said the mother.

“Do you have plans to ruin _every_ child?!” said the German mother.

Wonka scowled at Baki. “I don’t sell _drugs_ to _children_ ,” he snarled.

“Well you were happy to nearly drown one,” said wart-girl’s father. “I don’t see how that’s any different.”

“It’s _very_ different!” cried Wonka. “And now you’ve got _gum_ on my floor!”

“Better than my daughter eating it and turning into a fruit!” snapped the boiler-suit mother.

“We’re not continuing this conversation,” said Wonka, his voice ice. He turned. “If you’d all like to follow me,” he said, “we can go on with the tour like I wanted in the first place. And,” he said, “ _if_ you all behave, I’ll _show_ you the _good_ bits.” And he stomped off in the direction of the boat, the rest of them following.

…

“Mr Wonka?” asked the thin, raggedy boy, as they were all climbing back into the boat. “Why did you decide to let people in?”

“He is a shameless murderer,” said the German mother in disgust. “He gets pleasure from hurting people-”

“I do _not_!” snapped Wonka. “I wanted people to enjoy my factory!” He huffed disgustedly. “Wow! And look how well _that’s_ going!” He laughed sarcastically; bitter.

**Well _I’m_ enjoying it.**

_I guessed that._

“But why now?” asked the raggedy boy. “And why only si- um, five?”

 **Kid’s right,** said Shukaku. **Six is such a waste of effort. He should open the doors to more people. Crowd them in. Crunch their bones in the machines. Drown the stupid ones in chocolate and those fucking sugar-ball tanks. Blueberry the rest of them, then peel their skin off and see if the underneath tastes as good as it looks. Lock the fucking doors and see how many of the civilians go chakra-mad. Braise their-**

Gaara shut him up with a mental gag and waited for Wonka’s response… but Teavee had already interrupted whilst he’d been distracted, and Wonka was answering the wrong question.

“The best kind of prize is a _sur_ -prize. Ha ha.”

“It’s really not,” said the boiler-suit girl. “If the prize is a ‘ _sur_ -prize’-” (she mimicked his emphasis) “-then how do know it’s not crap?”

Wonka’s face soured. “The language on this trip is appalling,” he said, addressing the parents (and saving a particularly awful narrowing of the eyes for Baki). “And for your information, little girl,” he said to the girl in the boiler-suit, “it is the wait and the guessing that is half the fun with a _sur_ -prize, which I doubt you’d even know if you just got ordinary prizes all the time.”

“I hope it’s not chocolate,” drawled Teavee.

“Mike!” said his father.

The German boy added something incomprehensible to that, to which the German mother gave a snort and the wart-girl wrinkled up her nose.

“What’s the use of a lifetime supply of anything?” she said, condescendingly. “It’s boring. Money’s the best prize because you can get anything you want with it. Isn’t that right, Daddy?” She eyed the raggedy boy up and down as she said this and the grandfather of the boy looked insulted, though the boy didn’t seem to have noticed.

“Whatever it is,” said the boy. “I’m sure it’s something amazing.”

Mr. Wonka looked slightly mollified. He stepped into the boat and patted the seat next to him. The others started following.

 _I hate boats_ , thought Gaara, miserably.


	3. Nut Listening

It took another ten minutes to get to the next room, although Gaara wasn’t really paying attention for most of it. He figured they were heading towards some kind of nut sorting room because of Shukaku’s incessant nut puns, but he didn’t care to speculate any further.

 _Shut up_ , he said, to the demon’s latest attempt.

 **Shell I?** asked Shukaku. He seemed to be grinning. (Gaara remembered having put a gag on him not long ago, and he couldn’t remember when the demon had managed to remove it.) **Or shell I nut?**

_I will milk your face-juices with pliers._

**Pe-can nut stop talking to one another, Gaara! It’s nut healthy!**

_I will use my teeth to grind your bones down._

**D’omega big deal out of this Gaara! These are cracking good puns!**

_I will peel your eyes and bury them in salt._

**Geddit? Because omega is in nuts.**

_I will cut up your organs._

**Pine. I’ll stop ca-shew can be a real pain-ut the neck when you wal-nut let me do something. Sometime you pist-ach-i-ourself if it’s even worth the al-mond leg it takes to _get_ me to stop-**

_I will sew your patella into your throat and crush your ribcage._

**But hay! Zel be silence if I- Fuck that’s a lot of squirrels.**

“Squirrels!” shouted the wart girl, and it was the most convoluted English word Gaara had ever heard in his life.

“That is a lot of schrivels,” said the German boy.

**Ha! He said schrivels! Ha ha ah ha ha ha! Gaara he said schrivels! You try it! You try it! Say ‘squirrels’!**

_Squirrels,_ thought Gaara in his head.

“Sukireru…” he muttered.

Shukaku collapsed in a fit of manic laughter and, mercifully, stopped talking.

The room they’d stepped into was large, white and plastic, with several giant nut dispensers in one corner and a large chute in the centre surrounded by pastel blue swirls. Some of the squirrels sitting round the edges of the room were throwing nuts into it every so often and the sound of tapping (which seemed to be the way the squirrels checked the nuts) was so constant, it could, with closed eyes, be compared very easily to several old-fashioned typewriters going at speed.

“Animals in a place of food!” said the German mother, not sounding impressed at all. “Another health hazard.”

“For your information, these are _trained_ squirrels,” said Wonka.

“But why use squirrels?” asked the grey-suited father. “Why not use those Oompa-Loompa people you’ve got wandering about? Or, god forbid, a _machine_ , like the one I was telling you about earlier?”

“They’re not ‘wandering about’,” said Wonka. “They’re paid labourers. And the reason I use squirrels, for your information, is because, frankly, I wouldn’t use a Havvermavver Two Thousand if you paid me. They sound ineffective and boring, which is something my factory never will be and never is, and, for your _information_ , the squirrels can get the nuts out of the shell whole _every_ _time_ , which I bet is a boast your _machines_ could never live up to. _And_ , in _addition_ , if that wasn’t adequate reasoning on its own, they notice a bad nut when there is one. Which there isn’t often. Because they’re _my nuts_. Plus, if you say ‘god forbid’ again in my factory, I shall kick you out.”

“Look,” said the father with the comb-over, “I’m sure both methods have their advantages and disadvantages. Why don’t we just let Mr Wonka tell us about his factory without interruption and then this will all go much more quickly-”

“Of course,” snapped the German mother. “And all of our children shall be _murdered_ more quickly too, in increasing numbers!”

Baki and the comb-over father sighed and the comb-over father put his head briefly in one hand. Mr Wonka bristled.

“Notice the railing,” he said. “Notice that this platform is very far from the squirrels. Notice that there is a locked gate past which we shall not go. Notice-”

“Yes, yes, we notice that you have safety where you do not need it to make up for the safety we notice you are lacking,” snapped the German mother.

“Mother, I was too close to the chocolate,” said the German boy. “It was my fault I nearly fell in it.”

“But Augustus, you cannot _defend_ that horrid man!”

(“Dull,” said Teavee.)

The wart girl sidled up to her father and produced a beatific smile. She clasped her hands together in an expression of saintly hope (not that Gaara knew really what _that_ looked like) and said, “Daddy…?” in honeyed tones.

“No,” said Wonka.

The wart-girl gave Wonka a scathing glare, then she turned back to her father and said, “Can I have a squirrel?”

“Veruca, dear, you have many marvellous pets,” said her father.

“No I haven’t,” said the wart girl. “They’re not marvellous. How can you call a pony and two dogs and four cats and six bunny rabbits and two parakeets and two canaries and a green parrot and a turtle and a hamster marvellous? _They’re_ all boring. _I_ want a squirrel.”

As her father’s expression morphed into one of ‘ok, darling, Daddy will sort it all out tomorrow’, she interrupted, “and I want one of those squirrels. Not just any old stupid squirrel.”

Her father looked defeated. “Veruca,” he started.

“I want one,” said Veruca.

“You can’t have one,” said Wonka. “They’re not for sale.”

“Mr Wonka, however much-”

“No.”

“Are you sure…? A blank cheque? Your safety issues could be _easily_ remedied-”

Wonka’s eyes flashed. “Are you _threatening me_ , Salt?” he asked.

The boiler-suit mother smothered a laugh with a hand and her daughter looked smug. The grey-suited father just looked worried.

“Can you not get a schrivel you train yourself?” asked the German boy. “Would not that be much more fun?”

“Daddy!” snapped the wart girl.

 **Daddy!** said Shukaku in falsetto. **Daddy, I can’t do anything myself! I need a little rat to play with because I can’t play with myself because that’s so _lonely_ , Daddy! Boo hoo! Da~ddeeeeeeeeee~!”**

“Isn’t it a pity some parents can’t discipline their children…” said the boiler-suit mother.

“Isn’t it just,” said Wonka, narrowing his eyes at the German mother and Baki, and then smiling a saccharine smile in the direction of the grey-suited father.

“I _do_ discipline her!” said the grey-suited father.

“Prove it,” said the boiler-suit mother.

“I… I…” The grey-suited father looked cowed. “Veruca, dear, I… I am not… You can’t…” He gulped.

The company waited.

“You can’t…” stuttered the grey-suited father. “You can’t… Veruca…”

The wart girl stared up at him acidly and waited.

“Veruca,” said the grey-suited father, “you can’t have a squirrel.”

With a cutting howl, the wart girl threw herself onto the floor and started slamming her fists against it, screaming.

**Boo hoo, Daddy! Boo hoo! Get me a squirrel, Daddy! Waaaaaaaah!**

_I will make you swallow stomach acid._

The screaming was starting to grate on Gaara’s ears. He cleared his throat.

The wart girl immediately stopped screaming and banging, and glared up at him in fury. “What!?” she snapped.

“I think you not be good with skirrel,” said Gaara, trying his hardest not to falter on the word ‘squirrel’. “Obviously you be not mature as needed for the animals.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” said the girl. “Daddy, he’s stupid and foreign and I can’t understand what he’s saying.”

Baki coughed. “I believe,” he said, “that my son was saying that you would not be mature enough, in fact, to care for an animal like one of Mr Wonka’s squirrels, even if you were allowed one, and therefore that you should not have one. I am inclined to agree with him.”

The other parents (and grandparent) were nodding, and Mr Wonka looked mollified.

The wart girl stood up and brushed herself off. “I _am_ mature,” she said. “I am _very_ mature.” She smiled. It was not a nice smile. “In fact, I am going to show you how mature I _am_.” And, without so much as a warning, she climbed over the platform rail and started descending into the squirrel room.

“So much for your safety measures!” snapped the German mother. “This is all _your_ fault!”

“How is this my fault!?” said Wonka. “Her… her… her _caregiver_ is a jelly-stomached _twit_!”

The grey-suited father stiffened and spun.

“Get my daughter back out of that pit!” he snapped. “Frau Gloop is right! Your factory is no place for children!”

“No it _isn’t_!” exclaimed Wonka. “It’s a _factory_ , not a _playpen_!”

Meanwhile, wart-girl had already chosen a squirrel.

Gaara sighed. He started trickling sand down to where wart-girl stood, in preparation for what was obviously coming. The squirrels were already bristling. There was a palpable tension in the room. She reached out.

“Veruca!” shouted the father, as a hundred squirrels lunged simultaneously at his daughter.

 **Boo hoo! I don’t want a squirrel anymore!** wailed Shukaku in falsetto.

Gaara almost snorted.

“Daddy!” screamed the wart-girl, until she got knocked over by about twenty of the things and one of them ran up onto her face. Then she just screamed.

Gaara decided enough was enough. He settled sand plateaus under her clothing over the skin of her back and balls of it under her knees. Then he pulled her up out of harm’s way back onto the platform, laying her down _not_ gently in front of her father in the space where she’d previously been screaming.

Wonka had been in the process of getting out a key… not very fast. Wart-girl’s startled eyes met the startled eyes of the owner of the chocolate factory.

“That time _also_ wasn’t me…” said Wonka, nervously.

Gaara drew his sand back unceremoniously into his pockets, careful not to draw any attention to it. Not that that was difficult: they were all looking at the girl.

“Daddy, I don’t like this factory, it’s haunted,” said wart-girl, when she’d regained the capacity to speak.

**Boo hoo, Daddy! I want to go _home_ ~!**

_That joke’s boring now. Shut up._

“Have there ever been any _deaths_ here?” asked Teavee. Glee was spread out on his face: he looked like a new person.

**I like him even more. He’s our kind of person. Keep in touch, Gaara. We can kill people together. He can be our second in command.**

_No._

**You’re right. You’re second in command. He’ll be third.**

_No. Shut up._

**You’re right. Third in commands don’t exist. He can be slave.**

_Shut up or I’ll gag you indefinitely._

“Deaths!?” said the German mother. “I am sure there _have_ been deaths! Mr Wonka seems to put all his faith in mysterious forces and I would not be surprised to learn he has been summoning _demons_!”

“I’m sure that’s not the case,” said the grandfather of the skinny boy, just as Wonka started looking as if he would explode.

Baki’s flat mouth almost twitched but didn’t. Gaara suppressed a snort.

The boiler-suit mother looked interested and a bit bloodthirsty. “If you don’t mind my asking, Mr Wonka, what _is_ down that rather large chute? What would’ve happened if she’d actually fallen down there?”

“It’s a garbage chute,” said Wonka. “She would’ve gotten covered in garbage. Now let’s get on with the tour.”

The German mother narrowed her eyes at him but didn’t otherwise speak. The grey-suited father walked slightly further behind all the other parents as if in a daze, and seemed to flinch every time Wonka spoke.


	4. Television Chakra

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before,” said Wonka. “It’s by far the easiest way of getting round the factory.” Then he paused, his finger one centimetre away from the button to open the doors of the large, glass box seeming to float in space in front of them, walls lined with rows of buttons. “Oh, wait, I suppose I do know why I didn’t think of this before,” he said. He turned to the German mother. “Frau Gloop,” he said, “Would you rather get into a large glass contraption that goes sideways, slantways, longways and any other ways you can think of, and not scream at me that it’s a death trap? Or would you rather take the stairs?”

The German mother scowled. “I shall come with you in this glass contraption,” she said. “I do not trust my Augustus on your stairs.”

Wonka smiled. “We’re in agreement, then,” he said. “I too do not trust your Augustus on my stairs. He might get stuck halfway, and then what would we do? No, I think the elevator’s best, despite the fact he might not fit in it.”

The German mother puffed up in rage.

“He’s right,” said the boiler-suit, “he might not fit. How large actually _is_ he?”

“He is a healthy weight!” snapped the German mother. “Get in Augustus!”

“But mother, they have a point!” said Augustus, as he was pushed, protesting, into the elevator. “There are too many of us! And I hate heights!”

“Ah, that was the other reason I used the boat,” said Wonka. “That’s right. I remember. There are too many of you, and there are _still_ too many of you. We probably should take the stairs after all.”

“Have you only got _one_ elevator?” asked the comb-over father.

“Well there is only one of _me_ ,” said Wonka. “The Oompa-Loompa tend to get around- Actually, I’m not sure how they get around. Perhaps tunnels.”

“Daddy… can we get a glass elevator for _our_ house?” asked the wart-girl.

Her father twitched and didn’t speak. Wart-girl went silent and scuffed the floor with her foot.

“Well, we might as well _try_ the elevator,” said Wonka. He pushed the button. “Get in.”

Gaara followed the others into the elevator and shoved himself into a corner near the door. The boiler-suit mother had been right: there was very little room for any of them. Baki looked slightly ill, shoved up into both the body of skinny boy and his grandfather, and also into the boiler-suit mother, and into Gaara’s personal space, but he was a jounin, so to the others he probably just looked stoic.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Wonka, “I was planning on showing you more rooms in this elevator, but it might be prudent just to pick a button.” He sounded distinctly squashed. “Would someone near the buttons like to push one? Any one they can reach.”

 **I can smell her period blood** , said Shukaku towards the boiler-suit mother, with such suddenness that it startled Gaara.

“Gaara?” asked Baki.

“Anytime today…?” said Wonka.

“Can I push one?” asked Teavee, despite being nowhere near the buttons.

“If you can reach,” said Wonka.

There was a pause and then the glass elevator juddered to a start and shot off upwards, Teavee probably having looked at the buttons beforehand and then snaked his hand through legs.

“Which one did you pick, Mike?” asked his father.

“The TV room, obviously,” drawled his son.

“They have one?” asked his father, startled. “But it’s a chocolate factory!”

“I like my chocolate diverse,” said Wonka, and then gave an ‘oof’ as the elevator switched directions, and the collective bundle of people fell against him and pushed him further into the wall. Gaara used a subtle layer of sand armour to keep people off. He could feel Baki sweating.

 **Stop him sweating,** said Shukaku. **It’s annoying.** **It’s all wet and it smells weird.**

_It’s you he’s scared of. It’s your fault he’s sweating._

**Stop blaming every fucking little thing on me, brat.**

Gaara sighed. In Japanese he said, “Stop sweating.”

But it was at that moment that the elevator stopped, so it didn’t really matter in any case whether Baki (who had paled rapidly at what Gaara had said) stopped sweating or not.

“I extend that ‘no mumbling’ to ‘no foreign languages’,” said Wonka from behind. “I can’t understand what you’re saying, ergo it’s rude.”

 **English is the fucking foreign language,** said Shukaku. He grinned. **That means only Japanese from now on. Speak Japanese until your tongue bleeds and your teeth rot and your throat’s rubbed raw and your voice box is swollen. That’ll-**

 _He means no speaking Japanese_ , thought Gaara. _You’re an idiot._

**_He means no speaking Japanese, meh meh meh meh meh_!**

_You’re being a child. Stop._

**I’m being a demon. You stop. Stop existing. You’re boring. You won’t make people bleed anymore. You ought to just die and provide entertainment that way, fuck face. You won’t carry out any of my threats anymore, not even the good ones, not even if I ask nicely.**

_No_ , agreed Gaara.

He took the dark sunglasses he had just been handed by Wonka and put them reluctantly on. He probably looked absolutely stupid, but at least the others did too. It was good Baki had foregone his veil today in order to blend in, or else he would’ve looked the most stupid of the lot.

At that mental image Shukaku snickered, and then smothered it with angry, bitter silence as the Ichibi remembered he’d been sulking.

_I heard that. You laughed._

**I fucking know, brat. Shut up. And you do look ridiculous in those glasses.**

_You can’t see me any more than I can see me._

**No, but I can imagine.**

Wonka was already busy talking about sending a chocolate into a television, and looking excited again for the first time since the tour had started, but Gaara wasn’t listening. He had turned his attention to the little men sitting on white chairs in white-suits moving white levers. There was too much white in this room. No wonder Wonka had had to make sunglasses for it.

 **They smell of chakra** , said Shukaku.

_And of chocolate and sugar and screens. I can smell it too. Why is that significant? We already came to the conclusion Wonka uses accidental chakra._

**I can smell it in their blood, brat. The chakra’s _their_ chakra. It’s not accidental chakra; it’s nature chakra without sage mode.**

_I don’t know what that is._

**It doesn’t matter. Point is, they’re the fucking huge animal we thought he had earlier.**

_Oh._

Gaara walked up to Baki, who was watching about six Unpa-Runpa carry a ridiculously large slab of wrapped chocolate up to a circular platform, and bumped briefly against him to get his attention.

Baki turned round almost immediately in shock. Calculated, wary, slowed shock, because he was a jounin, but shock nonetheless. He looked down at Gaara.

‘One says little people use nature chakra like one person,’ he signed, using the Suna sign language he had been taught by Baki himself. Some of the signs were a bit wonky because he hadn’t practised.

‘Confirm,’ Baki signed back. He was definitely shocked, then. ‘Confirm’ was the equivalent of ‘pardon me what did you say’ or ‘excuse me what’ in Sunagakure sign, and Baki’s ‘confirm’ sign had itself been a bit startled.

‘One says little people use nature chakra like one person.’

‘I feel it.’

**Did you know, long-term nature chakra exposure makes humans go mad? Did you know it makes them erratic and psychotic? Did you know it can be used to manipulate inorganic matter? Did you know it makes them prone to bouts of addictive creativity at the expense of their lifespan? Did you know? Did you know? This is so fantastic! This is so awesome! Now you can kill them! Finally! Kill them all!**

Gaara signed this to Baki (aside from the last bit) and Baki signed (slightly shakily) back that he’d got it, and _now_ what should they do-

“Little boy!” shouted Wonka, holding up a hand. He actually looked worried this time, as opposed to irritated. “Don’t push my button!”

Snapped away from their conversation, Gaara saw Teavee – who was apparently not as clever as he had thought – had stood on the circular platform which was now rising slowly upwards with a hiss of hydraulics. He realised he’d heard the same noise before just a moment ago, after the Unpa-Runpa had produced that enormous chocolate bar. He didn’t see it anywhere now and they couldn’t have eaten it all in the time he’d spent talking to Shukaku. This didn’t look good.

**Just let him die. He’s expendable. Stop being such a pansy.**

_He’s a person._

The comb-over father was looking worried.

_He’s someone’s precious person._

**I thought you said you wanted to follow the rules.**

_The mission’s over. That means the rules are over. We’ve found out what we needed to know._ And that was a tiny bit of a lie, but Gaara knew that, if he didn’t stop Teavee now (and this was all happening in a split second in his mind: he could think-speak faster than he could actually speak when he wanted to, after all, even if he didn’t most of the time: Teavee was still ascending, although by now he’d risen into the air and struck a pose) there would be no turning back.

So he held out a hand.

And sand pushed Teavee backwards onto the floor.

And he hadn’t been subtle with it this time.


	5. Sweet and Sour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, as you’ve probably guessed, most of the stuff I’ve put about nature chakra is made up, but nature chakra does exist in Naruto canon (sage mode draws it from the surroundings in order to use it) and I’m working on that premise. Plus, the wikia says [spoilers] that Kabuto uses it at some point, to manipulate inorganic matter (matter that hasn’t ever been living like humans, animals and plants), so I used that too. Hopefully it all makes some sort of sense. Plus, most of the short-term symptoms of nature chakra exposure that I made up could also apply to Naruto (and possible Jiraiya) using Sage mode, so there you go, you see.  
> .  
> Guys, I just found out that the random place I picked for Gaara to have ‘found’ the ticket – Tottori – is, coincidentally, the only place in Japan to have a desert. I think I’m psychic.

Wonka was partially gaping. The skinny boy and his grandfather had identical ‘o’ mouths of surprise and hadn’t moved since Gaara had sent the sand. The boiler-suit mother had taken her dark glasses off to stare in shock (the light didn’t seem to be burning her eyes out in any way he could see) and her daughter had stopped mid-chew. The German boy had frozen and his mother was gibbering. The wart girl had backed into her father and he was still backing away, shaking his head. The comb-over father seemed to be on the verge of sobbing.

Baki was not making any sort of expression or attempt at speech, which couldn’t be good at all.

The Unpa-Runpa were looking curious.

And Teavee was picking himself up off the floor.

“Who did that!” snapped Teavee, turning to scrutinise the room. He turned to Gaara, who was the only person in the room with his hand outstretched and no expression on his face.

“Why did you do that!?” yelled Teavee. “I was going to be the first person to teleport! I was going to be the first person in the world to teleport, and you stopped me! Why did you stop me?! I _hate_ you!”

“Gaara, you are in trouble,” said Baki, without expression.

“I told you no foreign languages!” snapped Wonka.

Shukaku started laughing in Gaara’s head: hysterically; loudly; incessantly. Gaara gagged him again.

“I thought it was good he didn’t die,” he said to Baki, ignoring Wonka.

“He wasn’t going to die, Gaara! He was going to shrink, as Mr Wonka just demonstrated, if you had listened!”

(“Daddy, what’s he saying? I want to know!”

“Darling, I don’t know any Chinese.”

“Stop speaking in foreign languages that nobody understands! It’s worse than mumbling!”)

“Shukaku was too loud.”

“Regardless!” said Baki, although he looked a bit pale. “If you are able to ignore the Ichibi, _ignore_ him! You could _die_ from lack of information on a mission. You’re just lucky that this mission is only _B-ranked_! You cannot drift off into a daydream when you’re in the middle of a covert mission!”

“I saved him from shrinking then.”

“Gaara, are you _listening_ to me?!”

Teavee was halfway up onto the circular platform again, but Gaara pulled him back with a rope of sand and dumped him in front of his father halfway across the room. Unlike the first time he’d done it, there was no way anyone in the room could’ve missed that.

**Somebody’s _dea~d_!**

“Michael,” sobbed his father, “you are in so much trouble when we get home. I am taking away your games consoles and your television and you are going to do all the homework you haven’t been doing lately and I am taking you to an internet addiction clinic.”

“Dad!” said Teavee. “That’s not fair!”

“The tour’s over,” said Wonka. “That’s it. That’s the last straw. I’m not having supernatural abilities creating havoc on my tour. I’ve had it up to here with swearing and mumbling and insults and near-death-incidents and being ignored and people _ruining_ my factory, and all sorts of other things, and that incident was the last straw!”

“Wonka?” said Gaara.

“I think you mean Mr Wonka,” said Wonka.

“Do the little Unpa-Runpa of you has …chakra of air?”

“No,” said Baki. “Gaara, no. Stop it. Don’t. Wait, at least.”

Gaara didn’t want to wait. He ignored Baki.

 **Repeat after me** , said Shukaku, who had apparently removed the gag _again_. **‘Were you aware that your Oompa-Loompa had nature chakra and do you know what that fucking entails?’**

“Were you… were you…”

**‘Were you aware…’**

“Were you aware...”

**‘…that your Oompa-Loompa…’**

“…that your Unpa-Runpa…”

**‘…had nature chakra…’**

“…had nature chakra…”

“What’s that?” interrupted Wonka, “And why are you speaking so slowly?”

**‘…and do you know…’**

“Shut up,” said Gaara to Wonka. “And do you know…”

**‘…what that fucking entails.’**

“…what that fucking entails.”

Wonka and several of the parents acquired the same embarrassed and angry expressions they’d had briefly at the start of the tour. Gaara belated remembered that ‘fucking’ was actually a swearword and cursed Shukaku for his lack of tact.

“No swearing on my tour…” hissed Wonka.

Baki was himself cursing in Japanese a few paces over.

Gaara said it again. Without the swearword. “Were – you – aware – that – your – Unpa – Runpa – had – nature – chakra – and – do – you – know – what – that – entails?”

“No I don’t know,” said Wonka. “What gibberish are you speaking _this_ time?”

“Tell that to the Unpa-Runpa of you,” said Gaara.

Wonka looked put out, but he tapped the nearest Unpa-Runpa on the shoulder and made a sequence of frantic, very strange, gestures. The Unpa-Runpa looked worried. There was some frantic, strange gestures back and forth between the pair of them, and then Wonka said, crossly, “What’s nature chakra? They don’t understand.”

“Gaara, shut up now or we’ve failed the mission!” said Baki in Japanese.

The boiler-suit girl perked up. “He said urusai! That means shut up in Japanese!” She turned to her mother. “See! Anime _is_ useful!”

“Why are you telling him to shut up?” Wonka asked Baki. “I just asked him a question. What’s wrong with nature chakra? Or am I not meant to hear about it. Is it a _secret_?” He looked very annoyed.

 **Repeat after me,** said Shukaku.

 _No swearing_ , thought Gaara.

Shukaku suddenly exuded innocence and Gaara frowned at him suspiciously.

 **Ok, repeat after me,** said Shukaku, and cleared his throat. **‘Nature chakra is energy…’**

“Nature chakra is energy…”

**‘…that can be taken from nature…’**

“…that can be taken from nature…”

**‘…and manipulated…’**

“…and mani... manipul… manipulated…”

**‘…to make things motherfucking cunting happen, you little upstart shit.’**

Gaara narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Then he tentatively continued, “…to make things… motherfucking… cunting… happen, you little upstart …shit.”

Shukaku sighed. **Wrong emphasis!** he said. **You’ve ruined it!**

Wonka was looking extremely white. “I… I… I… what?” he said.

Half the parents were looking green. Most of the children were looking fascinated. The skinny boy’s grandfather had his hands over the skinny boy’s ears.

“Sorry for swear,” said Gaara.

Wonka made some shaky signs towards the nearest Unpa-Runpa. The Unpa-Runpa looked curious, and then signed back something different.

“He says you mean the energy of the universe,” said Wonka.

**Energy of the fucking universe, my fucking foot. Tell him the side effects.**

Baki was signalling ‘no’ in Sunagakure sign language somewhere in Gaara’s peripheral vision.

“You are maked by it… stupid,” said Gaara.

Shukaku roared with laughter. **Wrong word, brat!** he said.

Wonka’s face was turning an angry pink. “On second thoughts,” he said, “this is _not_ the last straw. The last straw will be when I _snap_ and I _close_ the _factory_ , and you won’t like that, _any_ of you, even if you don’t like _me_! This is the _second_ to last straw, and you _won’t_ enjoy it at _all_ when we get to the _last_!”

“Close the factory!” exclaimed the skinny boy. “But Mr Wonka, you _can’t_! Your factory’s the best thing that ever happened to this town! Your factory’s my favourite place in the whole wide world, and Grandpa’s was Cherry Street, and you’d have to make all the Oompa-Loompas unhappy again and move them all back to where they didn’t want to live, or make them _homeless_ , and there wouldn’t be any more amazing inventions and…” the boy had teared up “… and I wouldn’t ever want to eat candy again because I wouldn’t want to eat the candy of cheaters and liars and thieves like Mr Prodnose and Mr Slugworth and Mr Fickelgruber!” He was crying out-right now. “And that would mean I wouldn’t ever get a birthday present because your chocolate is the only thing I get for my birthday and the only thing I want, and you _can’t_ close your factory, Mr Wonka, because the factory starting up again was the best sight in the whole wide world in Grandpa’s stories, and that would mean your factory closing would be the worst sight in the world, and I couldn’t live with myself knowing I’d been there when you decided to close the best place in the whole wide world just because of some stupid people saying things about nature chakra and some stupid swearwords if I hadn’t tried to do something!” He took the dark glasses off to wipe his eyes and gave a gasping sob he seemed unable to stop.

Wonka was frozen in place, his back to the skinny boy.

“What’s your name?” he said, turning. His voice sounded dazed and Gaara didn’t think it was the chakra’s fault this time.

“Charlie,” said the Charlie. “Charlie Bucket.”

Wonka looked him up and down. He held out a silent hand.

Charlie took it. Shook it.

“Well done, Charlie,” said Wonka quietly. “You just saved a factory. And won one too, I think.”

The other children gaped. Wart-girl seemed to be so furious that she had run out of words.

“I suppose this might as well be a good time to say your entire body of staff, Mr Wonka, is under arrest,” said Baki.

Mr Wonka spun round in rage. “What have the Oompa-Loompa ever done to _you_!” he snapped. “I told you that this tour is _over_! GET OUT!”

“The prolonged, unregulated use of natural chakra around civilians is _illegal_ , Mr Wonka,” said Baki. “The Unpa-Runpa seem to have been using it at a constant, maintained, _conscious_ level for a number of years, as a collective. It’s built up. Your factory is _full_ of it. It can be used for the manipulation of inorganic material and basic communication without speech, but it can _also_ , and without _any_ prompting, cause erratic behaviour in whoever is exposed to it, lack of forethought, unhealthily long bouts of addictive inspiration, degradation in the ability to empathise, dazedness, insomnia, eventual psychosis, and death. It cannot be allowed to continue in a factory of this size. It cannot be allowed to continue at all in any way.”

All the colour had by now drained out of Wonka’s face and he and all the other parents and children were looking horrified, but none more so than the skinny boy, Charlie, and his grandfather.

“I’m sorry,” said Baki, “but that’s how it is. Unless the Unpa-Runpa can find a way of halting the flow of chakra altogether, then your factory is an illegal enterprise and cannot continue.”

“But… but… but what about the factory?” stuttered the skinny boy, Charlie. “It would have to close down! That’s Mr Wonka’s entire life! It can’t close down! It can’t!”

“There’s a reason prolonged nature chakra use is against the law,” said Baki. “Would you rather have no factory or no Mr Wonka?”

 **It depends how they die** , said Shukaku, grinning.

“Can’t _anything_ be done?” asked the German mother. She looked scared (probably only for her son’s wellbeing and not for anyone else’s). “Can’t it be stopped? Is the chocolate he made affected?”

“It can’t be passed on through food exposed to it,” said Baki, “since food is natural. And I don’t know if it could be stopped or not.”

“What about with training?” asked the boiler-suit girl. She looked backwards up at her mother, and her mother smiled down at her. “With enough training and discipline, you can accomplish anything.”

“Yes,” said the grey-suited father. “What about training? Or, even better, what about using actual _human_ workers, and using more machinery? I have _no_ nature chakra in my factory, and it’ll stay that way, and that’s how _I_ do it.”

Wonka’s face had tightened and gone blank. His hands were in fists by his side. “So I have to sack my family and make my factory a grey wasteland of metal, or I die,” he said, his voice breaking a little halfway through. “Is that it?”

“Nature chakra’s everywhere,” said Baki. “It won’t cause damage unless it builds up, which it has been doing _here_. There’s no reason for you to sack any of the Unpa-Runpa if they can contain it, and there is no reason for any excess machinery.”

Wonka’s face brightened. “Contain it?” he said.

Baki looked grim. “I don’t know how that would even be possible,” he said. “If they’re doing it by habit, then it’s likely it’s a habit they won’t know how to break. Nature chakra’s addictive in itself. If a person’s using it routinely, then without it their systems might start shutting down. I don’t know much more about nature chakra than that, and a lot of it is just theory, since there hasn’t been a case of natural chakra build up for decades, but that much is known. Fifty years ago, seven people died from the continuous output of natural chakra from one person, including that one person themselves when they tried to stop it.”

“So... it’s like smoking, right?” said Teavee.

“What?” said Baki.

Wonka had made a face at the mention of the word smoking and had crossed his arms.

“Smoking,” said Teavee. “Like, there’s an increased ability for the smoker to tolerate the intake of nicotine, which is addictive, and it’s deadly over a long time, and passive smoking can cause horrible stuff to happen to other people who breathe it in too, and it can change a person’s chemical make-up. So why can’t you just deal with it like smoking? Reduce the input until they aren’t addicted, and break the habit that way. It only takes twenty-one days to make or break a habit, y’know.”

Everyone was looking at him.

“What!” said Teavee. “It could work!”

Baki looked thoughtful. “It could,” he said. “But how to reduce the input is the only thing.”

Gaara frowned.

 **Isn’t it obvious?** said Shukaku. **Honestly. Brain-dead cunts. Their nervous systems should be fucked out of their mouths and eaten and their spines should be made into really large drumsticks.** He laughed. **Seals. Fucking idiot! You’ve got one tattooed on your stomach containing a fucking _chunk_ of natural chakra talking to you right at this fucking _minute_ , and you forget about seals!**

“Shukaku says seals,” said Gaara, in Japanese.

“But drawn by who?” said Baki. “I thought of seals. It’d never work. Leakage, you see. We have no-one able to draw them securely enough not to have leakage.”

“Yes we have,” said Gaara, stubbornly. “Chiyo-sama. Shukaku’s a different type of natural chakra, because he’s sentient, but he’s contained. Shukaku says the Unpa-Runpa aren’t affected by the natural chakra. He says they’re not human: they’re a different species of people, so the side-effects don’t count for them.” Or, he’d said that in a round-about way, anyway. “Leakage wouldn’t matter because it would only be nature chakra leaking into the Unpa-Runpa, and not into the surrounding area. It wouldn’t be dangerous.”

Baki blinked. “You want Chiyo-sama to draw seals for hundreds if not thousands of people from a foreign land that she doesn’t know.”

“Just one seal,” said Gaara. He already felt slightly hoarse from all the talking he wasn’t used to doing. “On one Unpa-Runpa. A simple seal. Then have an Unpa-Runpa copy the rest with blood ink. They have the chakra.”

Baki looked pensive. “It’s doable,” he said. Then he turned round to look at their blank-faced audience who didn’t understand a word of what had been said.

“We think we have a plan,” said Baki, and started the explanation over again in English whilst Gaara breathed out through his nose and tried to swallow away the hoarseness in his throat.

“What’s a seal?” asked the wart-girl, after Baki had finished, which meant he had to explain it for a second time, with the added definition of a seal.

By the end of it, Wonka was looking excited. “So we can stop the build-up,” he said. “We can save the factory. It’ll be safe for Charlie.”

“Why didn’t you _tell_ us someone would be getting a factory?” asked the wart-girl. “I would’ve _tried_ harder.”

“I like your chocolate, Mr Wonka,” said the German boy, “but I would not want to make it. I have to inherit my father’s butcher’s shop in Dusseldorf.”

“Yeah,” said the boiler-suit girl. “No offense, Mr Wonka, but I don’t want to run a factory when I’m older. I want to win competitions.”

“I want to develop video-games,” said Teavee. “Or become a scientist. Or be a video-game scientist. Whatever, really. And then I want to do lectures at MIT or Harvard and be on the same guest list as Stephen Hawking.”

Wart-girl looked reluctant. “Maybe I don’t _actually_ want a factory,” she said. “But Daddy has a factory, and he’s very rich, and I want to be richer than him, and also to become a model, and a movie star, and have a whirlwind romance with a billionaire who’s also a famous actor, and travel the world and stay in all the most expensive hotels. Actually, maybe I won’t have _time_ for a factory. So there.”

“So you could’ve actually _told_ us,” said Teavee. “Y’know. Instead of sneakily trying to get rid of us by tempting us into doing stupid things like-” he glanced sideways at the German boy. “Like jumping in rivers.”

“It was chocolate!” exclaimed the German boy. “What was I supposed to do?!”

‘Not, duh’ said Teavee’s expression, but he didn’t say anything. “You could’ve just asked who wanted a factory,” he continued, to a Wonka who was looking slightly sheepish and a bit annoyed. “Because then everyone would’ve said no, and you would’ve gotten your answer like-” he clicked his fingers “-that. And we wouldn’t have had to walk through an entire factory for a whole day and nearly get shrunk and turned into fruit and drowned and dropped in rubbish and gone mad with chakra and stuff, speaking of which…” he turned to Gaara and Baki. “Who _are_ you, anyway?”

“Yes, I think I’d like to know that,” said the grey-suited father, who’d regained some of his former bluster. “Throwing sand about like that and saving people from squirrels.”

“And from certain death by drowning!” piped up the German boy’s mother. “He cannot swim, you know.”

“And telling people gum is drugs,” said the boiler-suit girl. “I don’t know where you come from, but it must be a sad place.”

Wonka was frowning. “I thought you said you were from Japan,” he said.

“Lying,” said Gaara, with Baki shaking his head in despair to the side of him. “We live in desert near. Secret land with chakra.”

“Covert,” said Baki in Japanese. “It is a _covert_ mission, Gaara. Define covert for me. C-O-V-E-R-T. Covert.”

Gaara ignored him. “Man he is name Slugworth says you has slaves. We check.”

“The extra ticket!” said Wonka. “I _told_ you there weren’t meant to be six tickets. _How_ did you replicate one!? How!?”

Gaara shrugged.

 **Idiots,** said Shukaku. **Come on, that’s basic forgery we’re talking about here. Basic. ABC forgery. Bet the fluff-headed civilian bastard can’t even sign his _own_ name without checking to see which way the swirls went the last time! Amateur cunt.**

“Can we go now?” he asked Baki, in Japanese. “It smells too sweet in here.”

“ _How_ did you replicate it!?” said Wonka. “ _How_!?”

Gaara shrugged again. “I not know,” he said.

“Can we _go_ now?” asked Teavee. “I’m bored to tears. I want to get back to my game.”

“Internet _addiction_ clinic, remember, son?” said his father.

His son groaned.

“Yes!” said Wonka. “Go! Get out! Shoo! Scram! And you can take the stairs this time! Charlie, grandperson, you stay with me. We’re taking another way out. And don’t ruin anything on the way!” he shouted to the people already halfway out the door.

“Hey, Mr Wonka!” shouted the boiler-suit girl, poking her head round the door. “Two things! Where do we put the sunglasses, and also, how do we get out?”

“Box to your left and stairs to your right,” said Mr Wonka. “Go down.”

From a few metres down the corridor could be heard the sound of wart-girl’s despairing, “I don’t _care_ if you left your hat in the entrance hall! I want to go _home_!”

Gaara followed Baki out. He didn’t want irritated eyes on the back of his head the entire way down the stairs. Behind him, Mr Wonka was excitedly talking to the skinny boy, Charlie, and his grandpa.

“S-” something. In English.

He ignored it, though he could’ve picked out the words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, how was that? My first full-length, completed, chaptered fic. Please review, and say if anything’s weird, or if there are typos, or if any of the accent things should be left out. I don’t have a beta, so you’re basically my front line of defence for these sorts of things. Anyway, I’d love to hear your favourite bits! :)   
> Alibi  
> x

**Author's Note:**

> *O-kashi ya = I think it means sweet shop / candy store in Japanese. This is based on Google Translate, so, if I'm wrong, please PM me.  
> **Tottori = It's a real place in South-West Japan. I've actually never been there: I just picked a random place on Google Maps.


End file.
